Couldn't believe we slept till late morning. We felt bad as the family had waited for us to wake up before having their breakfast!The first thing Paul & Uwe did was take the BMW R75 for a ride. It was good for Paul to compare the two military bikes. It is considered the BMW is a smoother bike to ride but the Zundapp engine is better engineered.
Uwe was soon to reappear in his band uniform and we were to go to the local Schutzenfest at BENTFELD.
Klaus arrived and we were ushered into his car and away we went. We learnt that every village has a Schutzenfest which involves the men of each village to compete at shooting a wooden bird off a perch.
The winner is then declared 'The King' and three weeks later a village festival (the schutzenfest) is held involving a street parade with the King and Queen (dressed as if they were getting married), bands and various social clubs walking down the main street. We were proud to watch Uwe pass by playing his LYRA (pronounced 'Loora'). That's him on the right.
The whole village then followed the procession to the sports-ground where the festival continued for the rest of the day.
It was a real spectacle complete with circus games, dodgem cars and of course the many drinking tents.
Here's Beate, Uwe, Paul & Klaus partaking of an ale following the procession.
In our travels to come we saw several schutzenfests about to happen and knew what the process was about.
Because it came in so hot we all drove home and enjoyed the shade of the trees in the backyard. The kids swam and played with the odd ball being hit over the fence into the corn fields. Luis loved trying to find the balls among the corn crop.The rest of the afternoon was spent with the ZUNDAPP - Uwe & Paul going through the finer points and finding out more about the 'old lady'.
Later in the afternoon Uwe's brother Frank came around in his beautiful GOGO MOBILE to take us on a 'tour' of the village. WOW, what a gorgeous car. Our minds immediately started entertaining the idea of driving one of these for our next holiday - maybe, just maybe, a Gogo Mobile is the way to go.
Away we went with Frank tooting everyone we passed. They all laughed and waved -what a hoot. Thanks Frank, great experience.
Time was getting on and it was decided that we would all go to the local hotel for tea.
Frank drove Lea & Luis to the hotel and the rest of us walked through the village which was just beautiful.
We walked through the cemetery and learnt the family graves are only such for 25 years, then the plot is re-sold. The families remove the headstones
to make way for the next ones. I couldn't help but imagine a back yard full of family headstones going back generations...!!! I wonder what happens to them? I guess we are lucky in Australia that we are a young country and have the option of recording our cemeteries original histories.
We also walked past the 1000 year old church and down narrow, treed laneways alongside water channels. It was just beautiful. We also saw Frank still driving around in his Gogo Mobile.
We all ate and drank (that seems to be the only thing we are doing!) in the outdoor 'beirgarten'. Very pleasant.
As we finished the sky began to light up with much lightning and thunder. The whole sky would light up dramatically and the thunder was right overhead. We decided we better make tracks for home before the rain came. It was quite a spectacle. We made it home just before the first drops were heard on the roof.
We gave Lea a large toy kangaroo and Luis a koala. The look on their faces was worth it. They nearly burst with pride.
We learnt that Lea & Luis didn't want us to leave after that.
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